Doyle was a freak of nature and I mean that in a good way.

Sure. I'm not saying that it's easy to be massively out of shape and then grind 50 hour weeks. I'm saying that a lot of poker players know how draining it is to use your brain that much, and work out and eat healthy, making a multiday tournament less of an endurance event and more of a 'showing up to work today as usual' thing.

Right. I'm not saying it's running a marathon but 14 hour days are extremely draining even if you're in good shape and eat well. Part of why i prefer cash is when I don't feel like playing anymore I stop playing and I generally play 6-8 hour sessions. A big reason a lot of younger poker players are in good shape and eat well is basically training for these long events as you said- which kind of proves the other posters point about endurance events.

14 hours???? Where did you get that number from?

Do the math on how long day 1s on some of these events take if you register level 1

Seems like people who reg level one should love late registration. More money is going into the prize pool and the people late registering have fewer BBs to play with. Increasing the prize pools is good for everyone, especially when those registering late are at a disadvantage BB wise

Extreme late registration is a clear ICM advantage, not a disadvantage.
You could even argue that having a shorter stack is an advantage, because you can go easily go all-in, in which case your equity is protected against the possibility of having to fold on future streets.

The only advatage to early registration is that, if you are +EV against the tournament field, early registration gives you more time to leverage your advantage.

But given that the majority of players are -EV, most players would actually benefit from registering as late as possible. Really the only reason that anyone registers on time is that fish like to play when the stacks are really deep just for the entertainment value.

I agree that WSOP should dial back a little how long late-reg is available. WSOP Main I don’t think you should be able to late-reg on Day 2, I think all players in the Main should have to navigate Day 1 if only for a level or two. But in general, I think the length of late-reg periods has gotten a little too much. Just shorten it by a couple levels.

That being the case, I assume it's what you do - have you found it advantageous?

I think it makes sense to take the strategy to it's logical ends by skipping 100% of it. I would guess a lot of posters here do this with good success.

10bb might be a bit extreme but would save everyone a lot of time to start with 50 or 60. thing is a large percentage of any field is playing for entertainment purposes. that's why tournaments start uber deep

OP doesn't even understand the real problem with extreme late registration: That the people who register very late for a tournament are getting an overlay for their entry fee, due to the dead money in the prize pool contributed by everyone who had busted out during the registration period. This may be offset by the advantage a skilled player has in the early levels of a tournament in taking advantage of the weaker players in the field, thereby building big stacks.

Any player who does not have a decent understanding of short-stack tournament play and when to play push/fold is a sucker, and deserves to lose their money to the people who know what they are doing. Short-stack strategy in tournament play is like putting in golf. Every player needs to learn it. It doesn't matter how good your swing is at the tee or on the fairway; if you are not any good at putting, you cannot succeed at golf. And so it is with short-stack play.

The problem of tanking and shot-clock abuse is more vexing, in my opinion, because it is more intractable than the late registration issue. If late reg is seen as a problem, the solution is simple: make the deadline for registration earlier. The issue with trying to control decision time abuse is that every player has a legitimate need to take time to go through a difficult decision once in a while. It is difficult to rein in the abusers without impacting everyone else.

One of the issues is that the structure of tournaments incentivizes strategic tanking, as opposed to tanking to make a decision. Rather than restricting player behavior, maybe what tournament directors should do is examine what it is about tournament structure that incentivizes tanking, and changing the structure, instead of penalizing the behavior that is a natural, even appropriate, response to those incentives.

I late reg often especially online and I understand why people do it, but I still think its BS and if I was forced to not do I would happily stop doing it. It just feels like such an advantage to not spend the time on the grind. Very often when I early reg I end up having a similar stack to starting stack when late reg comes to an end. So whats the point playing early? I know I can take advantage of poor players who make large mistakes early, but out of experience its fairly seldom that I have a massive stack after early regging. Its most often around start stack.

During a long tourney Im going to get that 10-15bb all in flip/60-40 that I have to win anyways, I cant really avoid that. So if I can just do that 5-10 minutes after regging instead of spending 2 hours grinding before losing that flip, I dont see any reason to play before late reg.

If everone was forced to reg earlier I would happily do that, knowing that everyone was in the same boat. But early regging and then seeing reg late reg, win a flip and then sit on a larger stack instantly than I have after early regging just leaves a bad taste.

Being able to late reg into day 2 is absolute horseshit.

My apologies for not quoting the part about golf. That is the perfect analogy. I agree. If you don't know your short stack you have a huge leak in your tournament game.
Just like you can't win a golf tournament without being a decent at putting. In golf you still have to be able to hit a decent tee shot, and show that you are average or better at chipping before you can even putt.

To continue with your excellent analogy, I feel, max late reg is like taking golf, and simply placing the ball on the green and starting there. It eliminates the other major disciplines you should have to demonstrate.

I would be interested to see what % of the money winners "max" late reg.

We would need to define what max late reg is of course, because I don't think all of them are the same. If the tournament last level of reg starting stake is 50bb.. I think that is a reasonable starting stake, however when you get to <20bb this is where the poker players "putting" strats.

Alan, truly great analogy. I truly appreciate it.

I feel like the best measure of how “late” late registration is would be the % of the field remaining when late registration closes. This reflects both the ICM advantage gained by a max late registration, and the ratio of the average stack to the late registrant’s stack (and thus the degree to which new entrants disprupt the intended depth of play of the tournament).

TDs want the most entrants and having deep starts and long reg periods gives something for everyone. That shouldn’t be as confusing as you seem to think it is.

sure but the late reg periods go on for far to long. how many people who register after level 9 wouldn't register after level 6? you also chase some recs away who i'm sure get pissed off seeing events won by a guy who got in super late. additionally since it's +ev for tourney pros to leg reg that means they're taking money away from recs who otherwise would cash more often and play more events which is bad for wsop.

there's a balance somewhere and it's long before 8-10 hours in and in some cases even day 2.

Tournaments are already very unserious, and having people jump in after 6 hours looking to jam their starting stack within the first orbit makes them feel even less serious. I don't know if late reg is objectively good or bad for my bottom line, but it does seem to stress the importance of variance at key inflection points since you stand to benefit or suffer tremendously based on how you run in these spots where fresh stacks are looking for spins.

As more entrants = more rake for the venue, I'm not sure my opinion matters. Venues are incentivized to let people jump in as late as reasonably possible.

Played the Monster this year and there was some obvious tanking as we approached the money bubble. Otherwise I haven't found it to be a big problem at my tables. There are obviously spots where it becomes flagrant though, such as deep in the Main or really near any big bubble or pay jump. Shot clocks and time banks for all ITM situations would not be a terrible solution IMO.

Would say that tanking is objectively worse for the game, but that late reg is annoyingly long in too many events. The idea of day 2 reg is extremely silly to me.

I wonder what the ICM advantage shift is for PKOs? I play on an app site where their $100 PKOs have hundreds of people max late reg/rebuying with 8bb into avg stack of 40bb+, surely then the $ev from ICM advantage is lost out to the ev loss from when you cover almost nobody?

I do think a lot of online tournies are going way too far with max late reg, with some letting you late reg into 30% of field remaining. Anniversary sunday millions spring to mind as the most ridiculous, late regging into basically just needing to win a flip for ITM and still have the chance to run deeper.

Live tournies I think the ICM advantage of late reg is offset by the fish who would already be busted and how light they will punt off 100-250bb in a 2-3k live event like its an online $5 mtt.

Late registration is a clear disadvantage for PKOs.

In a conventional tournament, when a player busts out, they leave their buy-in in the prize pool. But with a PKO, half of their bounty immediately leaves the prize pool (with the other half being added to the bounty of the player who busted them). A player who registers late is playing for a smaller prize pool than one who plays from the very beginning.

More importantly, a late registrant's starting stack will be less than the average stack size in the tournament, very much less if they enter late in the tournament. Much of the equity in PKOs comes from winning bounties, and to win a bounty you must have a bigger stack than one's opponent in an all-in spot. Not only are late registrants competing for a smaller prize pool, they are severely limited in their ability to win the bounty portion of that pool.

I’m always serious

The folks who registering late have a case for less rake as they are at the table for less dealer hours

then so do the people who bust out early.